Epsom Baptist Church is a town centre church with a vision to be at the heart of bringing community transformation where all people are included and enabled and empowered to thrive. The term ‘church’, has come to be used in a variety of different ways, however, when we uses the word ‘church’, we mean:

* • A community rather than a building: The word church originally means ‘community’; it is the collective noun for a group of people gathered around the example and teachings of Jesus Christ. We therefore sometimes talk about church as a ‘Christ-centred community’.

* • A breadth of activity across the week rather than just a Sunday service: The word worship originally referred simply to living in a way ‘worthy’ of your guiding vision. Jesus summed up his vision as “Love God and love others as you love yourself.” The ‘worship’ of our church will reflect this.

* • Meeting together for intentional teaching and learning: Church communities meet together on a regular basis as an intentional way of learning about living the way of Christ, building relationships, and serving the needs of others to bring about community transformation.

As our church grows, one of our priorities is to support our community work through volunteering, resourcing in other ways, and serving as ambassadors in the local community, therefore contributing to a deepened sense of local ownership and participation.

The outworking of this vision for church is that all of our work is Christ-centred (driven by his values). Wherever and whenever a person experiences any aspect of our work, they should experience this reality.